Why? From what I’ve read, it was completely harmless. I smell FUD :-)

A subset of the tiles are paid advertisements. "Completely harmless" depends on your point of view. Personally, if I have a choice, I'll opt for the browser that doesn't show me "sponsored content" on first boot, just out of principle.

IIRC, the sponsored tiles only appeared on new installations and they weren’t targeting the user (i.e. the user’s privacy wasn’t compromised). I dunno, I remember reading about this and thinking how meaningless it really is and how grotesque the negative response is.

People overreact. When I saw that, I sighed and went on with my day. I consider unsolicited advertisements an unconditional negative, and for Mozilla to say that they included them because they think I'd like to see them is mildly offensive. I've got some similes in mind, but they all seem too over-dramatic.

Mozilla's done a few other things that I mildly dislike, and they tend to clump together in my mind. Nothing that's a big deal, but enough that I usually keep a copy of Pale Moon on the machines I use most often.

I think it's only fair to tell people when they've been downvoted.

I downvoted you because that smug sarcastic smiley really set my teeth on edge.

Whoops! My intention with that smiley was to not appear negative :-) (I do think it’s FUD.)

Seeing the suggested plugins pushed onto you on a special first page of "Add-ons" include Ad-Block Plus definitely made me worry about the death of the old, free, Firefox.